Barrick Mining (TSX:ABX) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Welcome to Barrick's Second Quarter twenty twenty six Results Presentation. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. As a reminder, this event is being recorded and a replay will be available on Barrick's website later today. I will now turn the call over to Emily Chang, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you and good morning everyone. We hope you've had an opportunity to review the press releases issued before the markets opened this morning. The presentation deck we'll review is also available to download on our website. Presenting our results today are Mark Hill, Barrick's President and CEO and Helen Cai, Senior EVP and CFO.

0:46 Other members of Barrick's management team will be available after our prepared remarks for Q and A. Before we begin, please note that there will be forward looking statements. This slide includes a summary of the significant risks and factors that could affect Barrick's future performance and our ability to deliver on those forward looking statements. This material is also available on our website. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark. Okay. Thanks, Emily, and good morning, everyone. So for those who don't know Emily, she is our new Vice President, Investor Relations and joins us from US Steel. Before we share our full quarterly results, I want to begin with the agreement with Newmont we announced today. Actually, I want to go off script straight away to make the lawyers nervous here. I want to clarify a few misconceptions here. Firstly, the total value of that package is approximately $4,000,000,000 So obviously it includes the proportion of four mile, but it also includes contribution of Newmont's properties, Mark and Fibreline, which add, I think, around 6,400,000 ounces as well.

1:56 It is also the cost of resolving historical disputes and litigation between the joint venture partners. And it also reduces the friction costs of the planned IPO, which will unlock even greater value for the shareholders beyond the cash proceeds from the transaction. And as we have said, they will be largely returned to the shareholders. So moving on, we have reached this agreement after four months of negotiations, so it now enables us to focus on delivering value through safely and consistently producing ounces. And our interests now are completely aligned as joint venture partners, which is critical. I did want to actually thank our counterparts at Newmont, Natasha and her team, and of course everyone on the Barrick team, for the enormous amount of effort and work that's gone into this over the last four months to reach this event.

2:53 So before I get into the results, there's also a couple of other things I would like to highlight, which I think are the key strengths that have come out of Barrick over the last nine months. So first, our leadership team. So over the last ten months, we've improved the operational performance across the entire business. And that's the thing, thanks to the strength of our operating site team, right, to our GMs and everyone right down through to the mining front. So we have also strengthened our relationship with Newmont, as we just said, positioning us well to grow and develop NGM further, which is also critical. Second, with the IPO, we are building the only major American pure gold company with high quality, long life assets that is exactly what investors including some of the world's fastest growing sources of capital are looking for.

3:41 And third, outside of North America, the rest of the world portfolio, which has a significant growth profile, also has a distinctive advantage in our ability to work with our Chinese partners, including, as you know, our joint mine ownership and co investment. And this enables us greater efficiency and supply chain strength, which has helped us control FBOP, and partnerships that improve outcomes and reduce our risk. So with this context, let me turn to our results for the quarter. As I said, we have had our third quarter in a row with excellent operating and financial results. We delivered on all four of our priorities for the year, the same priorities outlined at the start of the year. We continue to improve our safety performance. I'll get to that a bit later, but there's obviously still more work to be done there.

4:30 We delivered our gold production above guidance and met our cost guidance. We advanced our growth projects, Fourmile, Lama and the PB expansion, which remain on time and on budget. Not often you hear that in the mining industry. We continue to review record deck and commence the float owner development on July 1, as previously disclosed. And our delivering on production and meeting our cost guidance also allowed us to deliver strong financial results, which Alan will discuss a bit later. And finally, we achieved major milestones in the preparation of the IPO of our North American gold exit, is on track to be completed by the end of the year.

5:17 Now let me move to safety, which is still our number one priority, and our goal is that everyone at the proxy goes home safe and healthy every day. So we saw a reduction quarter on quarter in our frequency rate between that from 0.92 to 0.77. But disappointingly, we still had six LTIs. So there's still a lot of work to do, it's completely unacceptable, and we need to focus on our safety until we get to our target here at home. So all of our leaders all the way up to the Executive Committee, including myself, are spending more time in the field and at the mine site. They're doing more critical control verification and fixing more risks on the spot. On top of that, have also invested over $90,000,000 this year in technology to improve safety.

6:02 This includes our of mining equipment, right down to vehicle dash cams, safety reporting software and AI analytics. Analytics. And we're also working hard to engineer out as many safety hazards as possible. So turning to our Q2 highlights. Actually, before I start on the Q2 highlights, one other thing I'd like to clarify about earnings with adjusted earnings, zero eight two per share, is in line with the Bloomberg consensus. Know there's some media out there this morning, does it not, that we missed, but I'm not sure what the source of that is. Barrick produced 796,000 ounces of gold in the quarter, which was 3% above guidance and 11% over Q1.

6:53 The main drivers of that were we progressed the ramp up of Blue Luke and Cotter ahead of schedule. PV ramped up faster than expected after the maintenance shutdown in Q1. And we mined record tonnes underground at Cortez and continued the ramp up at Goldrush. On the copper side, we produced 56,000 tonnes. We managed costs well, and our gold costs, as I said, were within guide. Our earnings nearly doubled year over year, and we more than doubled quarterly shareholder return to $1,500,000,000 And the strong performance for Q2 is obviously across all of our regions, though North America continued to anchor our world class portfolio. MGM and PV both registered year over year revenue growth.

7:42 Together they accounted for 53 per cent of our total attributable adjusted EBITDA at a margin of 61 per cent. Our other regions also delivered strong gold production with meaningful attributable EBITDA at a margin of 59 per cent. Copper continued to perform well and delivered comparable margins per gold business. Moving on to growth. As I said, our growth project was bent on February during the quarter. So at 4 Mile, we ramped up the drilling to 20 active rigs, and we plan to complete the PFS by the end of twenty twenty eight. At Lumwana, made good progress on the mill expansion, which will double the copper production. We expect the project's 2026 CapEx to come in at the lower end of guidance, and the project remains on budget.

8:32 We're on track to produce our first copper from the expansion by the end of Q1 in 2028. The PV expansion also advanced on schedule. We have made progress on permitting and construction across the tailings facility, haul roads and water treatment plant. And we are also very pleased to report that we now have 90% of resettlement packages being accepted. We continue to review Recodec, as previously disclosed, and we have decided we won't start building the plant this year, so we have reduced our expected 2026 attributable CapEx. It was 600 to 700,000,000 and is now $450,000,000 to $500,000,000 The lower spend on the mine on Recodip has reduced group guidance for 2026 total attributable CapEx to $3.8 to 4,200,000,000 back to the IPO of our North American assets.

9:28 As I said, this entity will be a high quality, pure gold play company, which assets are located exclusively in low risk jurisdiction. And what I am pleased to share is that the Board has selected me to lead the new company as a CEO upon launch. We have completed all operating and separation agreement between Barrick and the new company, and we remain on track to complete the IPO by the end of the year. And we expect the vast majority of net proceeds raised to be returned to shareholders. I know several people have asked me in the past. So I will now turn it over to Helen Kai, our CFO, who will review our financial performance. Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Q2 marked the third consecutive quarter of strong production, health performance and financial results.

10:19 Net earnings were $1,200,000,000 a 50% increase year over year. Adjusted net earnings was $1,360,000,000 which equates to adjusted EPS of $0.82 in line with Bloomberg consensus. Attributable adjusted EBITDA of $2,500,000,000 was up 51% year over year with a 59% margin. On a cash flow basis, the second quarter is typically our lowest each year for free cash flow due to the timing of our annual tax and interest payment. This quarter we also incurred a one time $400,000,000 payment related to Rulo Concarto.

11:07 Combined this led to a 33% decline in year over year attributable free cash flow. Excluding this, attributable free cash flow for the quarter would have been over 60% higher year over year. Year to date, attributable free cash flow has been $1,400,000,000 more than double the same period last year. Turning to the operations, gold production increased 11% quarter over quarter and exceeded guidance. We continue to operate within our cost guidance reflecting an acute focus on operational efficiencies to offset fuel price pressures. We closed Q2 with a healthy $1,200,000,000 of net cash on the balance sheet, giving us flexibility to continue investing in our highest return opportunities and returning capital to shareholders.

12:09 Turning to our capital allocation framework, we have three priorities. First, managing the balance sheet with discipline. Second, investing our assets to drive earnings accretive growth. And third, returning capital to shareholders. Our framework is designed to be sustainable through the cycle. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with meaningful access to liquidity and undrawn $3,000,000,000 revolving credit facility and no meaningful debt due until 2033. Turning to our portfolio, Luwana and Fourmile are two clear examples where we are strategically deploying capital into organic opportunities that we believe will generate superior returns.

13:04 More broadly, we intend to identify similar earnings accretive opportunities to strengthen our growth profile while remaining disciplined in how and when we deploy capital. This is not about growth for the sake of it. It is about creating value over time with a suit of assets that has extraordinary growth potential. And finally, we are executing against our capital return policy. Our dividend policy provides for a quarterly base dividend of 17.5¢ per share with an additional performance top up at year end to target a total payout of 50% of attributable free cash flow.

13:50 We also completed $1,200,000,000 of share repurchases this quarter. Of the $3,000,000,000 authorization that was announced last quarter. In the three quarters since new leadership began in October 2025, Barrick has returned $3,000,000,000 in dividends and buybacks to shareholders more than double the prior corresponding period. We expect a careful execution of our capital allocation strategy to drive further shareholder returns. In summary, our capital allocation framework is disciplined, flexible and designed to work throughout the cycle.

14:36 It supports reinvestment in the business, advances growth, protects the balance sheet and creates a clear pathway for returning excess cash to shareholders. With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark. Okay. Thank you, Helen. So just on guidance, our 2026 production in Koscazar remain unchanged. So for the third quarter, we expect gold production to be higher than Q2, consistent with our plan, and we expect even higher production in the fourth quarter. Copper production should also increase in the second half of the year relative to the first half. To say it again, since October 2025, we have consistently delivered against our strategic priorities and set a new standard of operational performance.

15:27 And again, I would like to congratulate Dale, GM and our people on the site. We continue to focus on controlling costs, capital intensity and productivity, and based on what we see today, we remain confident in our ability to live on our full year commitment for 2023. So just a couple of things to conclude. Obviously again I'm going to finish with the most important thing, which is safety. And as I said, even though we've seen significant improvements, everyone is still focused on making sure every employee goes home safe every day. We have improved our operational consistency, which is what I said, and we've delivered on our guidance again. And as I said before, we've delivered on all our projects, they are on time and on budget, and I'll say again I'm not sure how many times we do that in the morning.

16:18 And we have advanced our North American IPO on Jebel Wealth. So we are basically on track to execute against all the four priorities that we set at the start of the year. And so again, I want to say, and of course we have transformed this relationship with Newmont, which allows us to get full value and expand MGM. So with that, I'll hand it back to the moderator for Q and Thank you. Thank you. For the Q and A session, we'll use the raise hand feature in Zoom. If you'd like to ask a question, click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Once prompted, please unmute yourself and go ahead. We'll now pause for a moment to assemble the queue. Our first question comes from Josh Wolfson with RBC.

17:11 Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead. Thank you very much, operator. Thank you, Mark, for those introductory comments and some of the numbers that were provided. I'm wondering if you can maybe break down more of the information behind the different values that would have been attributed to the agreement components. So I guess, what would have been Mike and Fiber Line within that 1,950,000,000 and then perhaps what the adjustments would have been to the prior disputes? Thank you. Okay. So just to be clear, I'm not going to break it down. On the prior disputes, I I can't give a number on that, we would have had to go through a process to actually get to that number, so we just got to where we are. And then on the structural changes, I mean, that we have this agreement done, we're we're actually going to go away and optimise this structure for the IPO.

18:13 So as you can imagine, that's a bit of a work in process. So the overall value that we had on the table at the end of this discussion was about $4,000,000 that I highlighted. And just one other thing, Josh, the thing I want to highlight is since I started this job, MGM has a lot of opportunity. Mean you know the assets well, and I'm sure you agree with that. There's been no increase in processing capacity there for years. We're dealing with twenty five year old infrastructure, and then we have something like Fourmile that comes in, which is a world class asset, and the answer is that we're just going to feed that through the current infrastructure and delay the other ounce, which anywhere else in the world if you found that number of ounces, you would be wanting to bring that in early.

19:04 My discussions with Natasha and Newmont right from word go was how do we get this together so we can optimize MGM. And by optimize, I want to look at increasing processing capacity, I want to stop trucking ore all over the state, and the only way I can do that is if we combine all these assets now and work together to see if we can justify a roaster or an autoclave and what we need to build, what infrastructure we need at Cortez to process Foremile and Goldrush, get our cost structure in place and increase our overall ounces. So where we've landed now, at least we're in a position in Montney to add a lot of value very quickly without getting into these disputes about allocation of resources. Obviously, Josh, there will be a lot of synergies as well, because we are just going to use the same team, are going to combine them all together, all the same equipment, and we can advance this a lot quicker.

19:55 And that was obviously my ultimate goal. Great, thank you for that detail. Just a follow-up question, with this resolution now completed, is the company considering a different structure in the IPO versus the 10% to 15% minority that was historically reviewed? And could you go larger? And if the company went larger, under what circumstances would there be a shareholder vote? Josh, it it'll still stay at 10%. I I don't see any of that just the way the company is structured. Anyway, correct me if I Sorry. It's George speaking. Yeah. Just exactly. And I think it's just a matter of looking at the structures that we started looking at right at the beginning, pairing it to the current structure because as Mark said, it's friction costs within that.

20:48 You know, to look at where it's domiciled, etcetera. So there's all these things that we need to go back and look at now that we have the And again, as Mark said, that's that's where the value comes as well. We we have this flexibility and option at. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Josh. Our next question comes from Tanya Yakushone. Your line is open, please unmute and go ahead. Good morning. Can you hear me? I can hear you, Tanya. How are you? How are you? Houston, we've made contact, which is awesome. Congratulations on your new role.

21:36 Thanks very few questions if I could. The first one is just coming back to Josh's question. Should we be thinking, Mark, that it was 4,000,000,000 of the Newmont assets plus dispute plus the 2,000,000,000 that is the top up for a total of 6,000,000,000. Is that how I should be thinking about the price paid? Tanner, it's 4,000,000,000 total paid expectation. Oh, okay. All right. Thank you for that. And should I be thinking about the cash that Newmont is paying for this? Is this going to be part of the cash coming into the IPO? Or would this $2,000,000,000 be cash that is going to be potentially used for share buybacks and or the top up dividend at the end of twenty twenty four twenty twenty six, sorry.

22:33 MR Okay, sorry, you're very hard here. But Tanya, I think if I got the question right, so the cash we get back would be the majority would be returned to shareholders, correct. Okay. And then my final question, Mark, just for some of the processes for this IPO still. You mentioned that you've done your separation agreements. I think everything has been filed with the SEC, the technical report. What are we still waiting for? Is it just approval from the SEC filing the three and a half year financials, completing the new board, maybe just the the the process of what we need to go for this to go live? Thank you. Actually, Tanya, let me hand it over to George's, more after date. Sorry. Take it. So so I I would say we're actually, very close. But like I said, you know, now that we have this agreement with Newmont and their consent, one of the things we wanna do is go back and look at how, you know, previous structures and compare that to what we have today.

23:40 So we just wanna go do that and make sure we do our diligence and understand the impact of that because we think there are big savings there. So so that's where we are at the moment. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Janet. Our next question comes from Lawson Winder with BofA Securities. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead. Thank you very much, operator. And I'm Art. Good morning to you and the team. Very nice operational quote. Congratulations on that. Just a couple of questions. To follow-up on four mile, I noted that the PFS is still on track for completion in 2028.

24:35 However, with it now vended into MGM, is there any scope to speed up development and potentially have the asset in production earlier than what the initial PEA had indicated or around sort of early 2030s. And then, yeah, so that's the first question. Okay, so thanks, Lawson. Look, obviously, my intention is to accelerate this as fast possible. Now that I sort of got through this process, I think that allows us to accelerate it for sure. Now we're still going to be limited by permitting timelines and things like that. But where I think we can really advance it is on the processing side as well, right, because I'm going to advance that, and I've already talked to Natasha about it, we're going to advance that all in parallel while we're driving those declines and doing this drilling. So it may not come on earlier, but hopefully when it comes on we will be able to ramp it up a lot quicker and to actually a higher production target. That would be my target.

25:37 Okay, very helpful. Thank you, Mark. And then maybe I could jump to the IPO. So after the initial minority interest is spun out, I mean, at this point, have you changed your thinking on what could come after? So I think you had indicated previously that it would just be an initial minority interest IPO and that would be it. Is there any thought to eventually IPOing 100% of BNA at this point? Lawson, not at this point. I think we're still on track to do the 10% and just show the value and highlight the value of a dedicated management team. And just by the way, we've already pretty much split the management team and hopefully have noticed the change in production and safety and things like that with just having that dedicated focus. So anyway, to answer your question, no, there is no updated, we are going to go past 10%.

26:35 Okay. Very helpful. And then in terms of the process, will there be a marketing process that will kick off in the relatively near future? There will be, but I don't know what the date is, George. You know Well, again, we just have to go back and look at that. But also, absolutely, there will be a to process. Okay, great. Thank you very much for taking the questions. Thanks, Lawson. Our next question comes from Anita Soni with CIBC. Your line is open. Please unmute, go ahead. Hi. Good morning and Mark, congratulations on your new role and on improving operations at MGM. My first question was with respect to the capital that you were talking about.

27:27 I think you just talked about, Sort of declining infrastructure, and I'm just wondering what the capital, would look like for a new roaster or a facility of that sort. And then what can we also expect in terms of MGM capital going forward? Okay, that's a good question, Anita. So on the roaster, I want to reoptimize the whole process flow. Mean you've been there several times, so you've seen what it's like. So the roaster, we've actually got hash looking at it prudently now, would have said it's $2,500,000,000 I don't really know, it be around that number. But that will offset a lot of things as you know, we'll be trucking stuff all over the countryside as well, and it would reduce some other infrastructure requirements.

28:19 And then as far as other capital, and Bess will help me out, there's nothing else is what else is material that's coming up in NGN? It's really it's so, obviously, our development of Foremile has been part of the market. Yep. And the conceptual PA is in the range of 1.5 to $1,700,000,000 that we'll be spending over the next few years on Foremile. And apart from that, that's really the the items that we've got in our capital portfolio. We are planning this year to pull some capital forward for the expenditure that we have on replacing our truck fleets at Purple Switch. And, actually, if the project process also got autonomous hauling that we have at Collins. There's following the success of those projects, but we'd still also expect to land our capital in line with what we got in previous years before North America. So those are the key points. Thanks, Chris. Does that answer, Anita?

29:17 Yeah, that's good answer. I think I also wanted to ask about the four mile PEA. I understand you are moving forward with the PFS with a different type of structure, I guess, in terms of what you're looking for infrastructure. But would this PEA like, should that not have been filed forty five days after you announced, the PEA? And I would venture to say that that's probably part of the reason why you're seeing your share price move because we don't really have a barometer right now outside of a slide deck that'll give you, like, you know, the bare essentials in terms of how to model this. And so you're seeing wide degrees of variance in terms of what people are modeling for four mile.

30:03 So would you be able to file the PEA that was put out last year so at least we have something to go with while this PFS comes out? Actually, Anita, it's a fair question. Do you reckon that's why our share price is down sevens? Well, I mean, it's if you're if everyone's debating whether or not there's, you know, what the 2,000,000,000 is and it's and people are backing out something lower, which is something that you said, on the call, then it's because they're not certain of what the four mile value is. Yeah. Okay. I I haven't got a good answer to that, Joey. I mean, when we filed the when we issued the PEA, it was conceptual in nature and, you know, still have to a technical Okay.

30:53 But Anita, you're saying you haven't got enough information basically. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a there's a lot there were a lot of things that are unknown in terms of mining methodology, unit costs, Right? There was a you know, we didn't know about this NPI. Right? That was one major thing that was embedded in there, but nobody knew about. So, anyway, I'll leave it there. I also just wanted to ask in terms of fiber We will take that away, Rob, and see how we can do a better job. I understand what you're asking. I'll work something out and come back to you. Okay, and I wanted to try one last time on the Fiber Line and Mike, can you give us some round numbers in terms of what that would add to the equation? I'm assuming and by the math, I would assume that you're Newmont is paying in for Fourmile, but they're also exchanging their, you guys are reciprocally paying for their 38.5% of Fourmile and Mike.

32:01 So it's a net, it's like, I guess it's 61.5% that they're vending in of those specific assets to get a collective $4,000,000,000 Is that the right way to look at Yes, so the right way is yes, we're paying for 61.5% of market fibre line and those others and that other settlement amount, which we're certainly not going to get into. Look, Anita, we we agree we're just going to go out with a number, and that was quite a bit. Look. I apologize, but I can't give you that breakdown. Okay. Alright. I guess with the IPO coming up, people are trying to understand what that significant component of Fourmile is. So any additional information would be helpful. Thank you. I'll leave it there.

32:49 Thanks, Aneta. Appreciate it. Our next question comes from Daniel Major with UBS. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead. Hi, team, and thanks for the questions. Sorry, just a clarification on the GBP 4,000,000,000, just to be clear. Is that the combined transaction value of 61.5% of Buy, Blind and Mike and 38.5% of Fourmile? Or is it just the Fourmile component? Sorry, if that's already been stated. Sorry, so when you net everything together and anyone jump in here if I get this wrong. So to get to the 4,000,000,000 number, it is the value of four month, the 38 per cent, then you have to net off the value of 61.5 per cent of Father Line and Mine.

33:51 There is some money in there to settle some legacy disputes, for want of another word, right, as well. And then if you want to understand the full B, there's obviously some benefit to Barrick by getting that consent and reducing the friction costs on the IPO. I'll probably make it very complicated, Daniel. No, no, that's okay, just being clear. Okay, that's fine. And then, I mean, you've alluded to some of this already, but if I look at the high level parameters of the 2025 PEA, 600 to 750,000 ounces, GBP 1,500,000,000 to 1,700,000,000 of CapEx and GBP $650,000 to 700,000 all in sustaining cost. You suggested there's GBP 2,500,000,000 more CapEx maybe on downstream processing and maybe some upside to the production.

34:46 Would it still be fair to assume that the all in sustaining cost would be comparable to the GBP $650,000,000 to GBP 700,000,000? Yeah. I would say it's comparable. And, hopefully, if we depending where we locate that roster, could actually see did you want to say something? There there is one point that we would raise, sorry, this is Bill Holland speaking. The basic ratings that we put out as part of the conceptual PA were naturally based at the consensus gold prices at the time, which from memory was around about $2,500 with just an excess. So if you do apply today's long term average consensus prices of $3,600 an ounce, there's about a $100 sensitivity for every thousand dollars if the gold price moves. So the right way would be we look at it is to say, we range what we put out previously plus $100 to take into account the fact that the gold price has moved by a thousand dollar cents.

35:43 Okay. Daniel, just to go back though, just to the engineering side of it, obviously, the idea is that we increase increase the overall production capacity in Nevada or reduce trucking. So yes, there will be more capital, but it will increase the production profile and lower the cost. That would be the target. Okay. And sorry, the line wasn't totally clear. So yes, so at $3,600 you'd add $100 to the $650 to $700 Was that what you alluded to, just to be clear? That is correct, yes. And that and that incorporates the tech NPI sensitivity in there? Correct. Includes all royalties including the debt. Okay. Okay. That's good. And then sorry, just final question on this. In in terms of the if we're looking at the valuation of the stand alone project or relative to what's implied in the GBP 4,000,000,000 and the various elements, is there any or can you provide some more detail on whether Newmont benefited from any assumptions around their 38.5% share of the infrastructure in that calculation that was imputed in the value of today's transaction?

37:00 I'm not sure I understand that question, Daniel. What do There is a net off against displacing other material from the process plants. How is that adjustment made? That is taken into account. It's taken into account by the two technical teams. By the way, the two technical teams, one from Newmont and one from Barrick, sat down with the model for all of the data and went right back and took all of that into account when we came up with BP. Okay. Thank you. And maybe just one more if I could. You've obviously, I guess, yeah, Mark, you're going to be leading the IPO vehicle. Can you give us any indication of how advanced you are in recruiting for the senior management positions in the parent company?

37:55 Look, so we are advancing that discussion, right, for the next letter of Barrick. And we will be updating you, I would say, shortly is the right term. We will update the market shortly. It's an advanced process, Daniel. Okay. Thanks so much for the questions. Thanks, Daniel. Our next question comes from Bennett Moore with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead. Hey, good morning, Mark and Helen. Congrats on the strong quarter. Thank you for taking my question.

38:47 I wanna pivot to a slightly different topic here. I'm wondering if you can discuss some more detailed ramp plans for Lulu and Guthu specifically in regard to the push into open pit ore? What sort of CapEx may be required to support this and your risk appetite to do so? Okay, thanks, Bernard. I'm going to hand it over to folks. So I think the best way to explain Earth on Cotto at the moment is, as we've said, we've ramped it up quite successfully. So what it has become is it's become self sustaining. And so therefore any capital and growth at the moment that we are funding is self sustained funding. And so our expected growth for next year would start coming from the Boto pushbacks and the open pits on probably early or middle of this second quarter.

39:45 So that's, I think most I can say at the moment, we are still looking at optimizing those plans, but certainly we would be starting to move into the open pits in the first half of next year. Thanks, Seth. All right. Thanks for that context. And then maybe on the production cadence overall. I know you gave some commentary, Mark, on the back half for both gold and copper, but MGM and PV tracking towards the high end, LG tracking ahead. So what level of conservatism do you feel is kind of baked in at this stage? Well, I don't think it's conservatism necessarily, but look, we are going to hit our guidance, as I said. Just I suppose to put something else on the table, we have had Balladero down for I think it's two weeks now, but we had a weather event where we had to evacuate everyone. I'm sure you probably saw it on social media and things out of Chile and Argentina.

40:42 So that has hit us, and Pallbara has been down for the opposite reason, because Wylie Creek Dam dried up and we had to shut the whole plant down. So while I'm still confident we are hitting guidance, and you are right, MGM is in a good place and so is PV, we have had some other issues throughout the portfolio. And nothing both of them are actually mother nature events and not actually operational problems. So I still think the guidance is fine, but it's certainly not conservative. Understood. And then real quick, just wondering how turnover trended at MGM during the quarter if you're still in the mid teens range? Who's got that number? It was 14%. Someone else brought this up. Does anyone know what the answer is?

41:29 I'll have to get back to you on that, Bennett. It's a good question, and it's something we are actually focused on, is making Barrick, and especially MGM, the employer of choice, right? It's not that long ago that everyone wanted a job at Barrick. And so we are working on that. As I said, the culture at MGM, despite what I might have been in some articles, has, in my opinion, turned around completely, right? And you can tell that just by the performance that I said, their production performance, their safety performance, just when you go there, the attitude of the workforce is certainly better than it was. But I'll get you the actual number, if you can note that down. We'll come back to you. Understood. Thank you. Best of luck.

42:15 Thanks, Ben. Our next question comes from Matthew Murphy with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead. Matthew, I can't hear you if you're talking. Matthew, can you hear us? Okay.

43:14 Our next question comes from Bob Brackett with Bernstein Research. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead. Good morning. A broader question and then maybe I'll follow-up with MGM. The broader question would be, if I think about the ex North America business, is there anything you're contemplating in terms of portfolio management on that asset base? And is that going to be slowed down by the IPO process? Sorry, Todd, just explain that to me a bit more. What do you mean by that? So think of all of the assets you have. There is a lot of natural partners or natural owners of some of your assets that sit outside of North America.

44:05 Does the North America IPO process sort of take all of your attention, and therefore we shouldn't expect a lot of portfolio management for the non North American businesses as we proceed, say, into the year end or early 'twenty seven? Look, actually, so Bob, the rest of the world portfolio is actually one of our biggest growth things. We talk about MGM a lot, but actually just at our recent board meeting, actually, we had a whole session on growth for the rest of the world. Potential you've seen, what's going on at Lomana and even around Kibali, and what we can do there. The current plan is going really grow the rest of the world, and that's what the focus will be. Sev, if you want to comment that.

44:53 I think you've covered it, Mark. Think the most important thing on the rest of the world is that firstly, we are looking how we can best optimize that portfolio. And in terms of what Mark suggested around the partnerships that we're able to leverage. And also we have a real embedded growth profile, especially Brownfields growth around most of our operations. So we have already embedded infrastructure and of course that's probably the lowest cost answers you're going to add into your production profile. And then, as you said, we've got the mono expansion on the copper. I'm not sure how familiar you are with those assets, but there is a lot of potential around those assets, which we're trying to crystallise and put into a proper plan.

45:51 Very clear. A quick follow-up on the agreement with Newmont, are there any contingent payments involved at all, say for hitting exploration upside or can we consider it pretty much done independent of future exploration success? No, it's done though. Okay, very clear. Thank you. Thanks. Our next question comes from Stephen Green with TD Covent. Your line is open, please, Amit and go ahead. Yeah. Thanks, Mark, for taking my question. I just wanted to follow-up a little bit on, on how you intend to, optimize MGM and potentially accelerate four mile. I think Lawson Anita asked most of my questions, but maybe you could just just talk a little bit about permitting requirements and and what will be required there.

46:53 Okay. Thanks, Kevin. So look, on the permitting, obviously, wanna get the permit for the full and the big bond driver fits out first. And after that, when I look at this, which again is why it's critical that we've got this joint venture sorted out, I have to understand what we can do as far as processing before I can even start the permitting. So I'm trying to accelerate that for that very reason. It's probably not a bad time to get permits in Nevada as well. So I can't give you a clear answer on the timing on the permits and that sort of thing, But now that we've got this agreement in place, we are going to sit down and completely optimise Nevada and that ore flow. And I know Newmont is supportive also of what's called increasing processing capacity.

47:44 Stephen, we always get into the same discussion, we are going to have to thrash out which is autoplay versus roaster and where it should be positioned. I just haven't got a clear answer on that, but that's what we will be accelerating starting tomorrow. Okay, thanks. And just to follow-up again on Fiber Line and Mike, I believe you said there were roughly 6,400,000 ounces in those properties. Correct? Are those inferred ounces? Actually, anyone know what the breakdown of the 6.4 is? I was just going through the presentation before this. I'll get back to you on that, Stephen. Okay, thanks. And where roughly are those properties and kind of how far advanced are they?

48:32 So Fiber Line is close to the infrastructure at Turquoise Ridge. And I think that is at a reasonable status. It's an open pit, so it would be a matter of a satellite deposit. Mike at this stage I haven't put a lot of value towards that mainly for that. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Dave. Our next question comes from Martin Pradhya with Veritas Investment Research. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead. Hi, thank you for taking my question. I wonder if you have given any thought about floating 10% of the ex North America as well.

49:25 Floating 10% of like you basically now you're going to have like almost two companies like the North America and everything else, The rest of the world. Put you down the line load 10% of the non North America, the same way you're doing now the IPO for the North Americans. Okay, Martin, I've got be honest, we have not had that discussion. It's never come up, so it's certainly not on the table at the moment. Okay. And the second question I have is, in other expenses that there was this 200,000,000 for Lulong Lukoto because you're applying if I understand correctly the 2023 law retroactively.

50:17 Was that part of the original agreement? And if it was, why it was not included in the previous quarter? I'd like this in a bit of a fluid situation, as you can probably imagine. Let me hand it over to Helen to explain that. Hi, thank you for the question. The nature of the spending is additional royalties, penalties, and associated interest based on the retrospective application of the 2023 minuteing code, specifically for the year of 2024 and 2025. So previously we had already settled anything related to 2023 and earlier years, but this is specifically for the 2024 and 2025.

51:09 In terms of the amount paid, we paid cash $4,400,000,000 in April. And also we had a further payment demand of 48,000,000 that was received in July. I hope that answers your question. No, I'm just curious why it was not included in the previous quarters. Like it was part of the original agreement. It wouldn't have been provisioned or something. Yeah, maybe you can add to that. I think maybe to simplify it, the original agreement only covered up to 2023. We continued applying our conventions through that period where we were negotiating and in dispute. We still applied our original conventions. So this was effectively as per the agreement, only applied the retrospective application to 2023 and therefore we had to do a reconciliation with the government for 2024 and 2025.

52:11 And this was that payment effectively. Okay, that's very clear. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. Our last question comes from Lawson Winder from BofA Securities. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead. Yep, thank you very much, operator. And thank you for taking the follow-up. I'll try to make this really quick. So one, you noted the revisions to the MGM joint venture agreement. Can you give us a little bit more color on the extent to which this would give Newmont additional say in various aspects of the operations and including the release of technical reports and whatnot?

53:06 Whatever detail you're able to disclose I think would be very helpful. Well, think there's a couple of things. Firstly, just as a general thing, it's not actually in the joint venture agreement, but the way we've approached this is completely different. Anyone will have access to whatever information and the site. And we've already done that with Francois and now with David, their technical lead too. And then they come and give any feedback they can and any suggestions, which is always helpful. As far as actual rights go, the main one is around they do have a right to and Joe, correct me if I get the language wrong but when we appoint the General Manager of MGM, we have to get their consent to who that is, which I don't have an issue with that at all. I think that's fair enough. And then the other part was, which we agree, which I also think would be quite helpful now that we've reset this relationship and actually we want to advance this as quickly as possible, is that we will likely embed in our executive team at MGM a Newmont employee, which I think will help it will go a long way just with the transfer of information and things like that, and they will feel more comfortable with what's going on. So at a high level, that's what we agreed. There was some other things around excluded property committees and other things like that, but really that's been taken care of for the fact that we've bought Fourmile and Fivemile and those things into the joint venture. So it's probably less relevant.

54:37 Okay, that's very helpful. And if I could ask follow-up on the question about the CEO search for Barrick Mining parent. Can you share with us if there's a preference between an internal or external candidate? Well, my preference is always internal, but at this stage we haven't got to that conclusion yet, who it is. So there's internal and external candidates, that's all I really can say. My preference is obviously internal. Okay, great. Thanks very much, Mark. Thanks a lot, Lars. I will now turn the call over to Emily Chen. Thank you. I just have an emailed question that I'd like to read out.

55:29 So given some feedback from shareholders, are you considering a spin out of North America to existing shareholders rather than an IPO structure? The shares of Nevada and PV are distributed to current shareholders rather than diluting existing holders. Okay, who asked the question? Daniel. Know Daniel, like you know, a lot of people ask that question, so the short answer is no. Anything else, Emily? That's it. Thank you. I'll turn it back to the moderator. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our event for today.

56:15 You may now disconnect.